********* From: "Samberg-Champion, Sasha" <schampion@warren-news.com> To: "'declanat_private'" <declanat_private> Subject: RE: FTC action against kids sites smacks of hypocrisy, by Lizard Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 11:55:08 -0400 Declan, In fairness to the FTC, it appears to have held off for a year in filing formal complaints against these companies and others, and preferred to work things out informally. Here's my story in today's Washington Internet Daily. -- Sasha Sasha Samberg-Champion Communications Daily, Washington Internet Daily (202) 872-9202 x 371 FAX (202) 293-3435 SChampion@warren-news.com Privacy Advocates Call For Tougher COPPA Enforcement As the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) reached its first anniversary, its leading advocates saw substantial progress in industry privacy standards, but some still complained of inadequate compliance by many companies. They sought more enforcement by the FTC, and the agency obliged Thurs., releasing its first 3 settlements with alleged COPPA violators and promising further actions. "We're encouraged by the progress we see," said Kathryn Montgomery, pres. of the Center for Media Education (CME), in a press call. CME released a study that attempted to parallel the FTC's 1998 industry survey, which helped motivate Congress to pass COPPA. "We found relatively good compliance with COPPA in just one year," said Jean Ann Fox, dir.-consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America. She said children's sites were improving their privacy protections "at a faster rate than surveys indicate is going on with regular Web sites," which have no such law governing them. This year's study showed, for example, that only 19% of sites solicited postal addresses from children under 13, down from 49% in 1998. Whereas in 1998 fewer than a quarter of sites that collected data also posted a privacy policy, in 2001 76.3% did. "The industry has gone to great lengths to come into compliance," said Lee Peeler, assoc. dir.-advertising practices in the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. However, the study also found that of 50 sites collecting enough information to require parental permission under COPPA, just 19 (38%) obtained that permission properly. It showed that only 34% of sites linked to their privacy policies in a "clear and prominent" place on the home page, and many didn't appear to understand that links for e-mailing the sites counted as a data collection point. CME also faulted several sites that made it too obvious for children that falsifying their ages as being above 13 would allow them to enter a restricted area. "The FTC needs to continue monitoring this law," Montgomery said. "The industry obviously has more work to do as well." The CME study is the 2nd in the last few weeks to find substantial noncompliance with COPPA, following one by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (WID March 29 p8). "Where there's substantial noncompliance, we intend to take action," Peeler promised. He said the FTC has "other matters under investigation" already. Several sites have complained that the cost of COPPA compliance has driven them out of the children's market. "There was a spectre of COPPA monetary policies coming down," said a spokesman for the Assn. for Competitive Technology, "and that led some folks, after consulting with lawyers, to modify their business behavior. You had kid sites that went away." However, Montgomery said her study's results showed "there are ways to customize... without having to collect personalized information." She said COPPA "has been made kind of a scapegoat." Frank Torres, legislative counsel for the Consumers Union, said some sites might have gone out of business because they had "a business model based on invading privacy without parents' knowing about it." He said that's "not a model we want to be supporting. The fact of the matter is, sites are complying with the law, and they are still in business." "They're painting an unrealistically bleak picture," said children's Web site lawyer Parry Aftab of CME and its allies. "The sites [in the study] are trying... They may not be right, but they're close." Aftab, who supports COPPA, said "the whole climate has changed radically" in the last year: "The sites have figured out that they're not allowed to collect information for the most part." She said COPPA had proved to be "a very, very difficult law" to comply with, but "we care about the bottom line -- protecting children on the Internet -- not finding violations." Under the FTC's settlements, 3 sites will pay a total of $100,000 in civil penalties for collecting personally identifiable information (PII) from children without parental consent. The settlements also require the sites to delete any PII still on their systems and link to the FTC's COPPA page. On behalf of the FTC, the Justice Dept. had sued the companies -- girlslife.com, bigmailbox.com and insidetheweb.com -- in U.S. Dist. Court, Alexandria, Va. The FTC action will "let everyone know they're watching," Aftab said. She said the sites in question "clearly have to have been cases where the sites didn't want to work with the FTC." Although the cases were the first released by the FTC, Aftab and her legal partner Nancy Savitt said the agency had been making a difference behind the scenes. FTC staffers "don't want to find sites in violation, they want to get them into compliance," Aftab said. "Instead of bringing enforcement actions, they've done what's been a pain for them -- they've picked up a phone and helped [the sites] get there. It's really wonderful." Savitt said the FTC had "worked with dozens" of companies on getting into compliance. Meanwhile, the FTC also approved its second safe harbor for COPPA compliance. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) joined the Better Business Bureaus' Children's Advertising Review Unit (WID Feb 2 p2) in having the right to certify sites as COPPA-compliant. ESRB said it already had 20 companies certified or in the process of being certified, including many of the major videogame companies such as Sega and Nintendo. -- {{Sasha Samberg-Champion}} -----Original Message----- From: Declan McCullagh [mailto:declanat_private] Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 11:27 AM To: politechat_private Subject: FC: FTC action against kids sites smacks of hypocrisy, by Lizard FTC press release and news coverage: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2001/04/girlslife.htm http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/04202001c.jsp Background: http://www.politechbot.com/p-01732.html http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=coppa -Declan ********** http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=01/04/20/038208&mode=thread COPPA Claims More Victims posted by lizard on Thursday April 19, @09:58PM from the who-needs-the-CDA dept. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 20 2001 - 09:26:38 PDT